That all changed when he met his daughter, Sarah. Most people in his profession didn’t get to grow old and retire, let alone have a family, but Jerle knew after finishing the contract on her mother that he couldn’t just leave that precious baby to die alone in a cold apartment. A complication came up right as he pulled the trigger, and he had to dispose of the unfortunate babysitter he had carefully arranged to appear guilty. At first, he intended to abandon the child at the doorstep of a kindly older couple, but he knew his involvement in her mother’s death could eventually catch up with him.

There was nothing else to do but adopt her. Despite everything, he didn’t have it in him to end a child’s life. Professional killers have to have standards, after all. Without standards, he wouldn’t be any different than the common thugs, brigands and ne’er-do-wells of the world. But he still had a duty to the Corporation: Never get caught. Never take unnecessary risks.

He retired.

The Corporation didn’t even have a plan in place to deal with a retiree. Usually, an assassin stupid enough to jeopardize their interests ended up dying while performing a contract kill. It was more convenient that way. To have an assassin still alive, just waiting for the FBI to interrogate them, was unthinkable. After dozens of PowerPoint presentations and graphs, they finally came to a conclusion. The final report read, simply, “The most efficient use of resources in regard to the conundrum of a long-term Special Projects operative is agreed to be termination.”

Jerle and his daughter had lived in peace for 12 years in his Havana safe house. He’d originally purchased it to hide from the local authorities, but now the mansion seemed the perfect place to live out the rest of his life and enjoy his hard-earned blood money. He had become a respectable man, trading his gun for a softball glove and attending boring PTA meetings.

Until today. When Jerle pulled into the driveway, he could immediately tell something was wrong. Someone had left his front door open. Relax, he thought to himself. You are out of the business, you don’t have to be paranoid anymore.

But he hadn’t survived 30 years of contract killings or spent all that time avoiding law enforcement by not being paranoid. Jerle reached down quickly and opened the secret compartment in the driver’s seat, retrieving his emergency gun. Checking it and exiting the car in one smooth motion, he quickly closed the distance to the house. He entered his home uneasily, stepping over the bloody corpse of his butler. Sweeping through his own home room by room, quickly and quietly, he was greeted again and again by the bodies of his servants.

Finally, he entered his study to find his computer smashed into pieces and the hard drive missing. Stuck into his desk with a knife was a note, with a photo attached.

Jerle impatiently ripped the letter from the desk and muttered to himself, “Fucking amateurs.”

There she was in the photo, tears streaming down her beautiful face with hands bound and mouth gagged. Glancing briefly at the letter’s content, he rolled his eyes and simply dropped it. The missing hard drive from his computer told him all he needed to know. Only the Corporation knew he was in Havana, and the only reason they would kidnap his adopted daughter would be to erase any evidence of his existence. They wanted to eliminate him.

The letter was full of the usual threats and was dressed up to look like a typical kidnapping for ransom. Reexamining his home more thoroughly, he found more of his things had been rifled through, with certain objects and files missing. How fucking stupid do they think I am? One thing was certain. They’d kidnapped the daughter of the wrong fucking man.

*

Crack. It was the fourth neck Jerle had snapped since he entered the Corporation’s Havana office. The low-paid security staff that guarded the front was mainly for show, and didn’t amount to much of a problem. It was the holding area ahead that was going to have people with actual loaded weapons.

“Drop it, asshole!” A voice roared suddenly from behind.

Fuck me, Jerle thought to himself. I get this far and this rent-a-cop sneaks up behind me? I can’t let it end like this, Sarah needs me!

“You’re here early,” the guard taunted as Jerle turned, slowly. “Does this look like the abandoned warehouse to you?”

“I always was bad at following directions,” Jerle spoke, slowly kneeling to place his pistol on the floor. He suddenly lurched forward, flipping his gun into the guard’s face. The man grunted, low and harsh, at the impact. It sent him tumbling backwards and he discharged his own gun in a panic. Jerle pounced on the man before he could recover, plucking the gun from the guard’s hands and firing it into his chest twice.

Voices began shouting from the next room over and heavy footsteps echoed from down the hall. Jerle didn’t wait to find out what was about to happen. Crouching low to the ground, he emptied the rest of the security guard’s pistol into the wooden door while simultaneously picking up his own weapon. A couple of curses and a shout of pain let him know he had hit his mark, and he quickly sidled up to the door.

After several moments of complete silence, the door creaked open slowly and the barrel of a rifle peeked through the frame. Jerle grabbed the weapon and yanked, throwing the man holding it off balance. With his other hand, Jerle placed a single shot into the surprised man’s forehead, permanently freezing the expression of shock on his face. The man’s collapse to the ground was far louder than the whisper from the suppressed pistol. Jerle stepped into the next room quickly, and saw that his shots through the door had hit the other man twice; once in the shoulder and once right above the heart.

The main security must be preparing the ambush site for me, Jerle thought. If I’m quick, we can be out of the country before they realize what’s happened.

Without further hesitation, Jerle opened a metal security door to find Sarah laying on a plush bed in lavish surroundings. Feeling his heart overflow with sudden joy, he ran towards her and grabbed her in a tight embrace. “My girl, thank God, we have to get you outta here!”

“Why can’t you leave me alone?!” Sarah squirmed and pulled away from him, eyes wide with fear. “They promised me they’d take me away from you forever if I told them where we live,” she cried.

Jerle frowned at his daughter. “Sarah, you belong to me now, you know that. No matter what you do, you’ll always be my little girl.”

Sarah began crying in earnest as Jerle grabbed her by the shoulders and squeezed. He lowered his head to her eye level and began to grope at her chest. “Sarah, I promise no one will ever take you away from me again. But first–it’s time for me to remind you why you do not run away from Daddy.”

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Chaos Mandy challenged me with “The Love of A Child” and I challenged Diane with “The price of progress is blood.”

We would often spend entire days together, just laying on the worn sofa letting the television steal the hours away. She accepted me for who I am, and I her. She always knew how to break through any defense I put up and get straight to what I desired most. Together, everything would be perfect. We would spend the rest of our lives together out of everyone’s way and feast upon each other like starving animals.

So of course she shot herself in the head. I have no idea where she even got a gun, or why she would even think to use it on herself. My perfect existence faded away like it had never happened. She laid there, staring up at me with lifeless eyes, more blood beginning to flood the room than was realistically possible. Why would my own personal succubus do this? “Why would you do this to me?” I screamed out at her several times.

As if my day hadn’t become weird enough, the room grew even colder, less alive. A sudden unnatural stillness filled the air around me, choking me with invisible thick tendrils.

Lauren’s corpse rose from the floor, having become a marionette to some unnatural power. She stood on shaky legs, hovering over her own blood, as if she would collapse again any minute. At first my heart filled with joy all over again. She was alive! But something was certainly wrong and it wasn’t just the hole in her head. Until this moment I had never seen someone give off such hate in a look, and especially not from her. Although I heard her speaking, her lips did not move. Her voice tore through the very boundaries of reality, forcing itself into my mind .

“Why did you kill me?” Her voice exploded through my skull in a terrifying accusatory tone. “We were so happy together, there wasn’t any reason for this!”

Finally I was allowed to speak. “I…I don’t understand! Why did you do this?” My voice sounded so far away in comparison to hers.

“You deny your failure, as usual. Go then, live your life and leave me to this fate.”

I stepped forward in my confusion and reached out to grab her. But there was nothing there, and her body was back on the floor staring up at me. I collapsed onto my knees and began sobbing, my tears already dripping from my face onto her body.

“Why did you do this!?” I managed to shriek.

Her face suddenly shifted, making eye contact with me. Her arm raised slowly, and a finger extended to point at me. My eyes followed where her now soulless arm was pointing, to find the gun in my own hand. With horror I finally realized what I had done. I did not deserve this perfect angel, so I had done what came most naturally to me. I ended her life.

“No,” the voice inside my head cried out. “I refuse to accept the blame!” With that, the atmosphere in the room lightened noticeably and the unnatural chill subsided. I glanced down at my hand to find it empty and the gun on the floor next to Lauren’s body. I did not kill the love of my life. I would not be weighed down by all of the world’s guilt. She chose to kill herself and no amount of self-flagellation was going to bring her back.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Head Ant challenged me with “Find one of your oldest and worst poems; rewrite it as a well-developed piece of prose.{A copy of the poem in your post is appreciated, but not required.}” and I challenged Carrie with “George Lucas has gone insane and must be stopped.”

Crysis is a game with a pretty fun gimmick, that being you have special powers. You can run really fucking fast, absorb lots of bullets, jump really fucking high and turn invisible and giggle at the enemy soldiers from nearby trees. The game is pretty decently long and you have a certain amount of freedom in how you accomplish your objectives. It’s not a sandbox, but you still have a pretty huge area to plan your attacks on each of the various bases you assault. Sniper attack from the mountain? Sure, if you are boring. Cloaked approach from ocean, swimming up to the docks and throwing the sleepy soldier into the ocean with your strength power? A bit better. Stealing an enemy jeep and speeding toward the front of the base blaring your horn the entire time while the enemies shoot at the driver seat but oh my god there’s no one driving the jeep but the wheel is still turning! Fuck yes.

Crysis really though is a linear shooter, and most of what it does isn’t too new. You can customize your weapons with various attachments, your health regenerates, and if you are playing on the hardest difficulty your commander won’t stop shouting in your ear while you are trying to sneakily take out these incredibly dangerous guys with assault rifles. NOMAD HURRY UP AND GET THOSE FILES OFF THAT COMPUTER. God damnit I’m a little busy hiding in a fucking bush surrounded by very pissed off korean soldiers while I wait for my damned space mana bar to refill so I can go hide somewhere else.

Where it falls apart: That’s pretty damn simple really. I’ll try not to spoil what little story there is, but halfway through the game you are no longer fighting human soldiers. Instead its these floaty robot things and for some reason its just not as enjoyable to sneak up on them as it is a scared soldier who has watched his whole squad disappear into the bushes and oh god I keep shooting him WHY WON’T HE DIE. The game once the “new shit” shows up becomes a lot more linear and culminates into an eventual boss fight. You know the kind, shoot the thing, now shoot the thing that makes the new thing open, and shoot rockets into the new thing. Also the game makes you drive a tank and a VTOL. These are not as cool as being the invisible ninja dude who throws soldiers into the ocean.

So that leaves us with the expansion. Crysis: Warhead is pretty boring really. There is nothing that stands out about the damn game except it only took me a few hours to beat. In fact, the only things I can really remember are not pleasant. For one, the settings menu has changed all of the graphics options to “Minimum, Mainstream, Gamer, Enthusiast,” instead of the traditional and simple low, medium and high. Just seeing this made me cock my head and whisper, “what the fuck is this shit?” Other than that, I guess its pretty fun if you really liked the original and are foaming at the mouth reading this wanting to throw more dudes off of cliffs, but just can’t bring yourself to press the New Game button. I guess also of note is the multiplayer portion of the expansion, which I completely skipped over because I’ve been spoiled to a beautiful mod.

Mechwarrior: Living Legends: This is the best fucking mod I’ve ever played for any game. Seriously, check this shit out. http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/While its still a work in progress and could use a few updates, it really is a fucking blast and to be honest the entire reason I bought Crysis. As for the expansion, I seem to recall some rumor or something about them moving the mod to the different engine at some point, so I went ahead and said I better nab this shit. Basically, if you have ever played Mechwarrior 1-4, or the Battletech board game, you will be right at home for this mod. Aerospace fighters, ground vehicles, fucking Elementals. I would have been happy just driving around a Mad Cat and missing all my shots at the Raven that is now behind me tickling me with medium lasers.

Ok, so you don’t know what all of this Battletech is. Well that’s simple, big fuck off robots piloted by “Mechwarriors” and they shoot lasers and missiles at each other. There really isn’t much more you need to know. Until the actual MechWarrior 5 comes out, this is a damned good replacement, and depending upon how things work out, may be my permanent replacement. If you own Crysis and haven’t heard of it or don’t know what I’m talking about, you owe it to yourself to give it a download. You own Crysis, chances are you like explosions and bullets and things anyway. You really haven’t lived until you blow off the Autocannon 20 of the mech in front of you, right before the next shot it would have fired would have taken off the last bit of armor on your center torso. Now it’s not perfect; it still has bugs, crashing, and the only gameplay mode can be only described as “shoot the other guys until they are dead.” But when I say the only reason I bought Crysis was for this, I mean it.

At first glance, this is a really mediocre clone of any other modern first person shooter. You take cover behind bits of wall and wait for your health to regenerate. You can sneak around but the moment you blunder into one dude the rest of his friends psychically know exactly where you are hiding. The guns feel a bit weak and the enemy AI ranges from professional sharpshooters to guys who engage in staring contests with walls. Game balance is all over the place with skills that kill even the last boss in one use. Unless you have skill points in the weapon you are using, you should probably just sell it and stop worrying yourself with it. Not that this is a bad thing.

But the game does one thing extremely well, and for me its enough to look past all of the bullshit. It tells a pretty good story and makes you feel very involved with its dialog system. Mike can respond in a few ways in conversation, suave, aggressive or professionally, and at certain points these choices change exactly what happens next. The only problem with this system really is you only have 5 seconds to settle on one of the choices, and sometimes there is no way of knowing that when it says “joking”, Mike is going to tell the girl you were trying to keep happy with you how much of a bitch everyone back at the office thinks she is or something.

The game is absolutely insane in the lengths that it goes to have branching paths and different outcomes depending upon the choice you make. Mass Effect presents the illusion of choice, but no matter what you make Shepard say, you aren’t going to fail to save the day. At least not because of a dialog screw-up. There are quite a few instances where choosing the wrong dialog option or electing to shoot everyone in sight completely changes the outcome of a mission. The game doesn’t ever become unwinnable or anything, but you might not find out certain facts playing the game one way that another player does, but that guy didn’t get to hear Mike’s awesome ice burns either.

After beating it I began reading other people’s experiences on the internet, and it is really surprisingly just how different their game played out compared to mine. Hell, some people even went through the game not even meeting certain characters that played fairly big roles in mine. Where Alpha Protocol really kinda falls apart for me though is the inclusion of boss battles. Here you are, sneaking through a small luxury yacht like god damn Sam Fisher, when suddenly a pink haired 15 year old girl with two pistols, a life meter and the superhuman power of taking multiple bullets to the face. I’m not really sure how I went from playing a cat and mouse game with a KGB agent to fighting a literal anime girl but it happened.

How to break the game: Well, if you find yourself sick of the combat completely, or you chose martial arts as your primary weapon and then find out about the BOSS FIGHTS, there’s a simple way to fix that. Just put enough of your skill points to get the “chain-shot” skill from the pistol tree. You could put all your points into pistols, but this skill is way too powerful in comparison to everything else. Activate, queue up 2-5 shots on the bad guy’s head and skip directly to the cut scene.

Is it worth it? I couldn’t see myself forking out 60 bucks for the console version of the game, or 49.99 for the PC version. It is a damn fun game at times, but I’d definitely let it drop in price or go on sale before snatching it up. Just remember, this isn’t the best third person cover shooter you’ve ever played, but it may be one of the best spy games. Or only spy game.